Unable to pilot the 480-ton vessel, McDonough, a Preston resident, was arrested shortly after the Sunday morning theft after SWAT officers stormed the boat in Elliott Bay, Deputy Prosecutor Ian Ith said in court papers.

“McDonough proclaimed himself a pirate, and said he had intended to flee the country to Victoria, B.C.,” Ith told the court.

“McDonough’s crimes in this case were not only a public spectacle, but were spectacularly reckless and deadly perilous,” the prosecutor continued.

Convicted in May of exposing himself to baristas at an Issaquah coffee stand, McDonough is alleged to have removed his GPS monitor before breaking into the Victoria Clipper dock at Pier 69 on the Seattle waterfront on Sunday, his 33rd birthday.

At 5:30 a.m., McDonough partially unmoored the parked vessel before accelerating away from the dock, breaking a cleat and damaging the ferry in the process, a Port of Seattle detective said in charging papers. The keys had been left in the ignition.

Police responded when the ship was spotted adrift near Harbor Island. A tugboat secured as a police negotiator contacted the pilot house.

According to charging papers, McDonough identified himself as “Zero,” made several rambling statements about maritime law and asked that a woman be brought to him because he was lonely.

Interviewed by police, McDonough made several nonsensical statements and claimed he was playing the part of a “pirate.”

“I was trying to hold myself and the boat hostage,” McDonough said, according to charging papers.

Charged with first-degree theft, second-degree burglary and first-degree malicious mischief, McDonough remains jailed on $200,000 bail. He is expected to be arraigned Dec. 18 in King County Superior Court.